After only two hours in the old country, I’ve become a bit deaf. The first thing I learn is that they honk to let each other know where they’re at. In America, we honk to say, hey, you’re in the way, Beep! A lone somewhat embarrassed honk daring to disrupt the morning commute. But here, all six million people seem to be honking simultaneously. Cyclo drivers and cabdrivers, the ox cart driver with his two-bit horn, everyone’s honking to say, I’m here, I’m here, Honk! Honk! Honk! Ok, I’m changing my mind, now I’m over here!

Here is officially called Ho Chi Minh City though my family defiantly calls it Sàigòn. My mom says, “I escape by boat to return and instead drown in a sea of sound.” The entire city is zipping around. If you’re not using one of the above-mentioned modes of transportation, you’re on a scooter. Candy colored Hondas and Yamaha, Suzukis and Vespas swoosh by, cutting and skimming each other. It’s like being at a football stadium while an off-key marching band plays its collective heart out and a low flying jet is hovering overhead. The roar is constant. It pulsates. I feel it on my face. It’s like standing too close to the speakers at a show.

While the bellboy shows my mom the room, I run out to the hotel balcony. Our room faces the main strip. We’re right across the street from the Continental. I remember it from that famous PBS documentary. The one where all the ambassadors and hot-shot journalists are sitting around smoking Gauloise cigarettes and sipping iced coffees right before Sàigòn fell. This was seconds before the choppers started coming in and air lifting people away.

I have an uncle who’s considered lucky because he was a translator so he got hooked up and lifted away. Not like the unfortunate cousin who has an elbow that hangs at an odd angle from trying to scale up the American embassy rooftop. Not to mention the cursed cousin. Family legend has it that he was once a beautiful female impersonator. This was before he tried to seduce an American officer into marrying him. His twice broken nose now makes him less delicate, less beautiful. Or so I’ve heard. I wish my mom would tell me the rest of the story.

After all the stories I’ve heard, I’m dying to get to know this place better. I want to eat pho for breakfast, bike in the countryside, sail beneath the jade mountains of Ha Long Bay, eat mangos at the beach. When night falls I’m still on the balcony daydreaming and watching the streams of light zigzagging the streets. The air is electric here. I close my eyes, face tingling and think, wow, Vietnam’s like a Van Halen concert, wet, steamy, thunderous.